Well-being and mentoring in pre-service teacher education: an integrative literature review

Purpose - Mentoring is an essential tool for teacher education, not least because it allows knowledge and experience sharing. Research findings suggest a close relationship between mentoring and the well-being of those involved. However, little is known about this relationship or the mechanisms involved. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issues. Design/methodology/approach - Through an integrative literature review, important links between mentor and mentee well-being and certain aspects of mentoring are explored. The results of the review are then synthesised into a theoretical framework. Findings - The framework developed here posits that the well-being of teachers relates to the quality of mentoring. This includes teachers' perceptions of mentoring and their decision to get involved, their contributions to functional mentor-mentee relationships and the selection and use of mentoring styles that support both mentor and mentee well-being. Moreover, the framework hypothesises that the quality of mentoring received by mentees is related to their well-being, which is in turn connected to their professional development. Most of these relationships appear to be bidirectional, meaning that mentee well-being also contributes to mentoring quality and mentor well-being. Finally, it is hypothesised that the well-being of both mentors and mentees is connected to the school context in which the mentoring takes place. Originality/value - This work provides a novel, comprehensive framework for future examinations of the connections between well-being and mentoring. It synthesises the prior work on this topic by integrating findings from both the mentor and mentee perspectives into a single framework.